I Guess that I Just Don't Know

I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good;

 but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing;

 whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. 

In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, 

because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

-Socrates, in Plato's Apology

Often the wisest answer, and almost always the most courageous answer is: "I don't know."

Not knowing is the beginning of a journey, and is therefore much more exciting and has so much more potential than any other way to address a question.  Claiming you know when you don't is hypocrisy, and has dangers to be sure.  Actually believing you know when you don't can be catastrophic.

Foregone conclusions often stand directly in the way of progress, and certainty often blinds us to the truth.

I read a lot of books, blogs, articles, tweets and tumblrs about what is wrong with our society and particularly with the societal institution called the church.  Folks these days are raising some very good questions, making some insightful observations and in the process glimpsing, here and there, what seems to be a way through this postmodern slump.

I am challenged and inspired by the questions on a daily basis.

And I am profoundly disappointed in the prescriptions and answers.

I catch myself straining forward for those answers sometimes.

When they come, I feel this sinking sensation: it's just the same old thing, the same old tired combination of institutional hocus pocus and hopeful (naive) insinuation that we're just a nudge away from things actually changing for the better.

When I get to that place, I usually go back and find the spot where the writer should have ended with a question mark, instead of pushing forward to a period. That's where I find the value.

It's a constant struggle though, because not knowing things is uncomfortable for me.  I have never been very happy with simple acceptance of the status quo, or "because I said so."  I have issues with "the way we've always done things."  I just don't always have the time or the energy to fight the inertia.

So I keep reading the voluminous commentary, the impassioned arguments and the surefire strategies to turn things around.  I'm really hoping that somehow, someway, somewhere, somebody has figured it out: relevance, vitality, basic survival, anything but the long slow decline.

I find myself wishing for a Pentecost or resurrection moment, where there is this radical event that changes everything.  Something may be coming, but I doubt very much if we'll see it before it gets here.  Up until the day of Pentecost the disciples were in a funk, they didn't know what to do.  Their only good ideas were tied up in an old vision of Zion and a miraculous return to the good old days.  They were waiting for answers and living with the same old questions.

What happened was rather unexpected, they could not have seen it coming.  The Spirit showed them something that did not fit their ideas of how things are supposed to go.  They began to ask new questions and perhaps more importantly started moving forward without a solid set of answers.  The who, what, when, where and why of the church were just going to have to be hammered out as they went along.  Over the centuries though we allowed "careful" thinking and all manner of practical considerations to convince us once again that answers are the key to what Jesus meant when he said, "you are my witnesses."

Do we need to get reacquainted with the phrase, "I don't know?"